Barbara McCoy
| Assign = Assistant Professor, Urey University }} Doctor Barbara McCoy was a Human woman, the daughter of Leonard McCoy. She was a xenozoologist and assistant professor at Urey University in the 23rd century and served briefly aboard the in 2266. History Barbara's mother "wasn't cut out to be a starship doctor's wife" and "couldn't stand starship life" according to Leonard McCoy, which suggests that Barbara was born after her father joined Starfleet, or at least after he had spent some time aboard a Starfleet vessel. ( ) :If Leonard's daughter Joanna McCoy was born before Leonard joined Starfleet, and Barbara was born after Leonard joined Starfleet, then Barbara is apparently a wholly separate character from Joanna McCoy. :It is possible McCoy's two daughters also shared a mother, Jocelyn Darnell, if she were pregnant when they divorced. It's also possible that McCoy’s wife Joann Zauber ( ) is Barbara’s mother. After her parents divorced, Barbara was sent to a boarding school, which she resented, keeping a grudge against her father and others in uniform. Barbara graduated from college in 2263, making her about 25 years old in 2266. :That suggests a birth year for Barbara of around 2241. That is consistent with TOS story editor D.C. Fontana's premise that Leonard McCoy was 45 or 46 years old in 2268 and could have a daughter that old. ( , pages 545-549). It's also consistent with McCoy's biography in , page 240, a reference available to the writers of this story, in which McCoy was described as 45 years old and having a 21-year-old daughter named Joanna. However, it's inconsistent with Leonard McCoy's later established biography of going to medical school in 2245-2249 and joining Starfleet in 2253, leaving only 12 or 13 years to have elapsed on Earth since Barbara was born. For her to be 20 or 25, she would have had to experience some sort of temporal disruption. Barbara worked as a xenozoologist at Urey University on Earth in 2266, where she was adept at working alongside many different animals, including the telepathic ursid-like vrell and a giant Ryunian octopus. In fact, she cultivated Solithian asparagus at the university just for the vrell. She was apparently well-known and respected locally, as state security officer Colonel Mitchum recognized her by name as "the freak-animal doctor" and was trusted to intercede in an incident where the vrell had killed a man and caused a great deal of destruction to public areas. Barbara suggested she might meet James T. Kirk again when she did her university extraterrestrial studies. ( ) Later that year, Barbara was assigned to the in command of a Starfleet mission to Bwuja with the role of chief xenozoologist. She had written a paper on "the adaptability of intelligent life to severe environmental change," and trained three weeks underwater to prepare for the mission. When she arrived, she was still bitter enough about her parents’ divorce to receive a warning from Captain Kirk not to let it interfere with the operation of the ship. But she was deeply affected by the plight of the royal family on Bwuja, which kept their children separated from their parents, and the experience led her to bond with her father and resolve their differences. ( ) Appendices Appearances * * Images GK40-Barbara-McCoy.jpg|Lecturing Kirk GK40-Vrell.jpg|Care of giant vrell GH40-Jobo.jpg|Feeding Jobo the octopus gold Key 40.jpg|Knocked off a building Gold Key 43.jpg|Underwater mission GK43-Barbara.jpg|In a spacesuit GK43-Agaara.jpg|Agaara attack External links * * Category:Humans Category:Humans (23rd century) Category:Biologists Category:Professors Category:Doctors Category:Scientists Category:Xenozoologists Category:Starfleet personnel Category:Starfleet personnel (23rd century) Category:Starfleet sciences personnel Category:USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) personnel